Category: Blog

Hi friends! We’re still here! All is well! Sorry for the long silence – we’ve settled into a nice routine in Portland and the weeks have just flown by! We’re going to work on a couple of blog updates over the next few days – this one will tell the story of traveling from Utah back to Oregon last month; then we’ll put together a couple posts to share about our fun times in Portland over the last few weeks.

Let’s travel back in time …

Sunday, June 11 (immediately following the music festival in Utah): It is time to put the canyons in the rear-view mirror. Kayla and Matthew are starting to long for trees, and shade, and maybe a break from the relentless and stark beauty of the canyons. We knew that after a weekend of Festivaling in the dust we would want a clean room and a shower, so we’ve booked two hotels as we push across Nevada. Our first destination is Ely, NV.

We leave Torrey and hit the highway. Kayla asks, “did something weird just happen?” and Matthew says “nah.” Ten miles out we pull over for gas to discover that we hadn’t latched the galley hatch, and it was fully open. Horror! Miraculously, nothing had flown out of our back end. The hatch had shifted horizontally on its hinge, but we were able to get it realigned and it shut just fine. How did we get away from that mistake without a disaster?!?! *whew* Learning from this lesson, we now check the galley hatch seven times as part of our pre-flight checklist.

From Torrey we move through Loa and Richfield, and then get on Highway 50 (the loneliest road) through Scipio, Holden, and Delta, UT. Just outside of Delta we encounter our first big thunderstorm. We’ve been watching the dark clouds ahead of us, not sure if our winding highway would lead us through it or around it. Sure enough, we are going through. It starts as heavy rain, but as we approach the center of the storm, it turns to hail. We watch the outside temperature go from 73 degrees to 37 degree in minutes. (You read that right: a 36-degree temp change in mere minutes!)

At the border of Utah and Nevada we encounter another storm strong enough to take us off the road. We find a little service station and get the car under a roof before the big hail hits. Incredible storms! We finally get to Ely around 4 PM, get a pizza, and camp out in our hotel for the night.

June 12: After Kayla’s morning meeting, we hit the road for a big day of crossing Nevada. We stay on Highway 50 pretty much all the way to Sparks, Nevada (basically a suburb of Reno) where we enjoy an evening in a casino hotel. A note about our casino dinner as written in our road journal:

Delicious Margaritas and a plate full of regret at one of the casino restaurants. Bizarre, soulless world of new age digital “slot” machines.

June 13-15: Our first stop was a county park in Sparks, where Kayla settled in for a meeting, and Matthew began to reorganize the Betty Mobile and started a de-dustification process that will last for weeks.

We take the winding Red Rock Road north out of Reno and over the pass into California. Along the way we see…locusts?…swarming sections of the road. They were huge!!

Highway 385 takes us to Susanville (awesome lunch at the Lumberjack Cafe!), then 36 west, 32 to Chico, and 99 to A9 (just east of Corning) to Woodson Bridge State Recreation Area.

What a great spot for what we needed! The campground was dense with trees, and right next to the Sacramento River (though no easy access to it). We will spend three nights here, fully unwinding from our four-plus weeks of desert camping and constant moving about. Still, after two nights of hoteling, we are so happy to be back in the Bettie Mobile. We skip dinner and go right to sleep.

Kayla has been assigned to a new work project that is keeping her pretty busy, so these are big work days for her, while Matthew continues the de-dusting of our vehicles, prepares some pretty delicious camp meals, and makes friends with the campground hosts.

June 16: By noon we’ve packed up and are ready to head north. We jump on I5 straight to Ashland, OR for another, longer visit with the delightful Sandy Burd. We’re pretty exhausted, and grateful for a little quiet time, showers, and excellent conversation over a simple dinner with Sandy.

June 17: We spend a lovely sunny day in Ashland, enjoying the parks and outdoor restaurants and a cool evening, solving all the world’s problems with Sandy.

June 18: A lazy chatty morning and then it is back on the road! Our drive today was really criss-crossy, beautiful, and fun! We take I5 just for the first part – through Roseburg and Sutherlin – but then we leave the interstate and have a lovely drive through rural Oregon. Hwy 138 to Rochester Bridge Road, and over a covered bridge.

Fun Fact: Covered bridges were covered so that horses wouldn’t freak out about crossing over water!

Then to County road 23, Metz Hill Rd, Cty Rd 29 to John Long Road, briefly on I99 North then Hwy 38. (Side note: The little town of Lorane is particularly charming.) Finally, we take Territorial Hwy to Richardson Park on Fern Ridge Lake, where we land for another three-night camp. The lake is lovely, and the campsites are huge. Perfect!

June 19-20: The campground is just outside of the city of Eugene, so we spend our afternoons exploring the city, and usually spend some evening time biking/walking around the campground and lake area. Very peaceful, lovely campground – highly recommended!

**There’s another thread connecting these Oregon spots that we’ll talk about more in a future post. The headline is that there is this brewery pub chain called McMenamin’s and they have brewpubs all over Oregon, and they have these Passports where we earn stamps (and prizes) for visiting all their places and we’re trying to visit as many of their establishments as possible this month. Our stops in Roseburg, Eugene, Corvallis, and Salem all included some time in McMenamin’s pubs.**

June 21: Moving on to Corvallis. Territorial Hwy, with quick bit on Hwy 36 to Cheshire, then Applegate Trail back to Territorial Hwy to Monroe, 99 West to the Corvallis airport, then a few more quick turns until we arrive at the Benton County Fairgrounds RV Park – our home for the next couple of days. We were too early to check in, so we drove a little further into downtown Corvallis. Kayla conducted an interview inside the Bettie Mobile parked near Central Park while Matthew found some A+ sandwiches at Old World Deli. After checking in to our campsite, we hopped on our bikes, found a quick and easy path into town, and enjoyed some food and drinks at … where? That’s right: McMenamins!

June 22: Massive day of work for Kayla, starting at 6 am at a coffee shop! Finally done at 2:00, we hop on our bikes again and take a long ride through town, next to the river, and through Willamette Park. We found some beers and tacos (at a NON-McMenamins! Notably: Taco Vino, which was super cool!).

This campground gets a C- for amenities (small spaces, no shade, marginal showers, terrible wifi) but an A for location (just a block away from a bike path that goes straight into the OSU campus and throughout the town). It’s a really interesting set-up though: it’s basically on the grounds of the county fair, so the 4-H and livestock buildings were right next to our bathrooms (they were empty of fair items, but in a testament to Benton County’s entrepreneurialism, they clearly rent out a lot of these spaces as boat/trailer/vehicle storage during the non-fair season).

June 23: On the road again! We pass through Salem (McMenamins!), then continued to Bill & Poppy’s house near Sherwood. Surely you remember Bill & Poppy, the musical friends we visited back in March? So lovely to be with them again. They’ve just returned from a bluegrass festival, so all of us are pretty tired. We have watermelon gazpacho (!!!) for dinner and call it a night.

June 24: Laid-back day, exploring Wilsonville (home of historic Boone’s Ferry) and playing some music.

June 25: We head out to McMinnville, where we’re going to have a McMenamin’s hotel experience! Fun (but HOT!) afternoon/evening: highlight was drinks on the Hotel Oregon’s rooftop bar. And the hotel itself is a super-cool renovated historic building.

June 26-28: We head into Portland, where we’re borrowing Bill & Poppy’s condo in the Sellwood neighborhood for a couple of days while spending some time with Jill & Desi – the people we’re going to be housesitting for – and meeting their three pets. Jill, Desi, and their son Rio are all delightful, the house is in a charming neighborhood, and we’re feeling even more excited about spending the next 5 weeks here.

Thursday, June 8: We move just a few miles, from the campground in Torrey onto the grounds of the Fort Desolation Festival. We are one of the first to arrive, and so Matthew takes the opportunity to try a time lapse sequence of all the campers setting up. He had purchased a bargain tripod at Wal-Mart a few weeks ago expressly for this moment. Two seconds into the movie, the tripod collapsed and broke. And that was that. Is there a lesson in there somewhere? I don’t know.

The first day of music was just two acts: Pixie and the Partygrass Boys (Bluegrass) and White Buffalo (Good ol’ Rock and Roll). Besides the main stage, the Festival has two smaller stages: one close to the main stage where local acts fill the time between the main stage music, and a late-night stage in the campground. Pixie played the late gig.

June 9: A much bigger day of music, starting at 4:00 pm. This is the day that Matthew and Kayla are most excited about. On the docket: Parker Milsap (Rock and Roll) Madison Cunningham (Alternative – the most dangerous music of the Festival), Houndmouth (Rock and Roll), and Shakey Graves (Holy Cow Rock and Roll). Madison’s music is amazing – her music serves her lyrics, so her songs go everywhere – no Verse/Chorus/Verse/Chorus for her.

We walk back to our campsite between each act, sometimes for food, sometimes for beverages. Kayla figures it is a half-mile walk each way, so we put in at least four miles of trudging through the dust.

Saturday, June 10: The final day of the Festival. This is when the Big Acts are playing, which for Matthew and Kayla are mostly less exciting than those that came the day before. On the docket: The Brothers Comatose (Bluegrass), Jamestown Revival (yay! A band we fell in love with when we saw them live a few years before. Americana), Morgan Wade (Country), Ben Harper (uh, rock? He’s a tough one to put in a box).

Kayla and Matthew took this day a little easier – we outright skipped Comatose (though, make no mistake, we could hear them plenty well from our campsite). Jamestown Revival had us in the front row, and put on a great show. We enjoyed Morgan Wade over cocktails at our campsite, and then trekked back to catch Ben Harper, but mainly from the food truck section.

The food trucks were tucked into a corner of the festival grounds. One truck served corndogs, and that was it. Everyone we passed who had a corndog was clearly in some sort of ecstatic fervor, and the line was always long. But Matthew was determined to get one. Guess what? He got THE VERY LAST CORNDOG. I mean the last one. He got his corndog and they closed up shop.

It did not disappoint. MT will probably never have another corndog, because there is no need. Once you’ve been to the top of the mountain, ain’t no reason to climb another. He even wrote a fan letter to The Corn Dog Company and said he would proudly wear one of their T-shirts if they sent him one.

While campers kind of had the VIP access to the festival, it was open to the public. Folks were pouring in for Ben Harper, and I’m guessing the crowd for his act was twice the size of anything the night before.

On the way to the Ben Harper show (or really, on our way to the food trucks) we caught the final act on the local’s stage. This stage made us feel pretty sad for the musicians all week. It was a Progressive Insurance Skee-Ball game, like you might find at a county fair, that the musicians climbed up on to perform. It was set up right at the entrance/exit to the main festival, so stopping to watch the musicians immediately put one in the way of everyone else. Tough gig! This final act, though, had folks actually stopping to take it in.

To cap off the evening, Jamestown Revival came back to play on the Late Night Stage. They really brought a crowd, which made things awkward as midnight approached. The band was having fun, the crowd was having fun, but I guess since the stage was in the campground, there was some concern about noise. The festival organizer came out to make a deal that the band would play one more song, but without amplification. Everyone got real quiet for a special final song before we all called it a night.

Pronounced “Es-Ca-Lant” apparently.

Trip Odometer: 12,347

Wednesday, May 31: After some solid provisioning in Grand Junction, we took a beautiful drive across I70 and through three small towns in the canyonlands of Utah: Torrey (we will return there later), Boulder (elevation 9600), and finally Escalante for five nights at The Canyons of Escalante RV Park. The drive took us through so many different landscapes: sand castles, red rocks, aspen forests, even snow at the higher altitudes.

Escalante (population 798, elevation 5,820 ft) puts us right in the heart of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

June 1: Lots of working during the heat of the day, but then a swell hike along the Escalante River to a natural bridge. There were dire warnings of mosquitos, but we only wound up feeding a few.

June 2-3: Not much on the agenda except a little driving around on the 2nd, but on the 3rd we take a teeth rattling drive down Hole In The Rock road to the Devil’s Garden. We’ve noticed this tendency all across canyon country to give things a hellish connotation: Hell’s Backbone, Devil’s Pocket, etc. For fun we begin naming other feature’s this way, for example, Devil’s Coatrack, and Hell’s Port-a-Jon. Devil’s Garden was super-cool: definitely a highlight of our whole trip so far!

June 4: Escalante is right next door to Bryce Canyon National Park, so we enjoy a long day there.

June 5-6: We travel the 65 miles from Escalante to Torrey, Utah for three days of exploring before we check into the Fort Desolation Festival. We take our time getting there and setting up. The next day is working and provisioning, nothing too exciting. We do play a little music and draw a little crowd for that.

Our single-file setup in Torrey.

Wed, June 7: Into Capitol Reef National Park in search of a hike to an arch we’ve been told about. We miss the turn off for the hike at first, and wind up taking a lovely off-road drive through the canyons. Eventually we find the trail and enjoy some uphill climbing at high altitude on a hot day.

That takes us up to our big Adventure Camping and Music Festival, which deserves its own post. Stay tuned for some pictures of something other than rocks! Oh, and there will also be pictures of rocks.

The cottonwood trees were in full swing. So many seeds that they piled up like snowdrifts.

Odometer reading: 12,347 miles

Hoo-weeee, we’re so involved in the present day-to-day that it’s hard to take time to reflect and share stories about our past adventures. But there are several lovely stories to tell about our 12 special days in Colorado. 

First – a reminder: we’re going to be housesitting in Portland, Oregon for FIVE WEEKS, starting June 28. If you’re around there or will be passing through, please let us know! Heck, you could even plan a trip and come visit us – we’ll have a guest room! Take special note of July 21: not only is it Matthew’s birthday, but the Jet Set Betties will be performing at Porchfest!

Okay, back to Colorado. Over the course of our 12 days there, we spent four nights in a nice state park/campground, four nights with our friend Carolyn in Palisade, two nights in the historic mining town of Redstone learning about the remarkable Mechau family, one glorious day in Glenwood Springs with one of Kayla’s Holden Village friends (from 25 years ago!), and two days on our friend Kenyon’s 120,000 acre ranch. 

Our “plans” for this time were very fluid, somewhat dependent upon when it could be possible to get to Kenyon (there is a creek to cross to get to his house and the mountain runoff was too much for us to get through until later in the month) and also being sensitive to Carolyn’s and Kenyon’s schedules. Highline State Park was our first stop on May 19 for one night, plus we returned there May 23-25. From Moab we took scenic Hwy 128 along the winding Colorado river to Cisco, a photogenic ghost town featured in Thelma and Louise, now home to a fledging artist studio and Buzzard’s Belly General Store, but not much else.

We drove a brief stint of I70 to cross the border and head through Mack to the state park. It was so nice to have a bit of shade under the trees after some brutal desert days. A lake, some nice bike trails, fun families to watch … We think to ourselves, “This place is so nice we could spend a couple days here.” At that time we didn’t know we’d be coming back a few days later – it worked out really well for resting and regrouping later in the week.

Saturday, May 20: We packed up to head to Carolyn’s, but first we stopped in Fruita for an outside-in-the-shade-brewery-lunch at the Copper Club plus ice cream from a sweet older lady with a tiny downtown shop (tip jar said “Grandma needs a vacation!”). Then we moved on to Palisade to visit Carolyn. 

Carolyn and her late husband Dorik Mechau are friends of ours from Sitka. They moved to Palisade several years ago to be near Dorik’s family and childhood home during his last couple of years. Our days with Carolyn were rich in conversation on all topics, but especially learning more about Dorik’s family and their relationship to this region (more on that in a moment). We also spent Sunday afternoon exploring Colorado National Monument. 

On May 26, after our few days back in Highline State Park, we returned to Palisade, and then followed Carolyn on I70 East to Glenwood Springs, then south on Hwys 82 and 133 to Redstone. WOW, what a fascinating place, in-and-of itself. The town was primarily built up in the late 1800s by John Cleveland Osgood – one of the elite “Robber Barons”. Osgood purchased large bodies of coal lands, built a railroad from Carbondale to Redstone and beyond, and then built the town of Redstone as a planned community for the mining families (88 cottages and numerous community/social buildings) so they would all just stay put and keep working. The town was complete in 1902; then in 1909 the mines closed. Attempts to make it a resort in the 20s failed because of the Depression, and by 1941 only 14 people lived there. 

Enter the Mechau family. Dorik’s father, Frank Mechau, grew up in Glenwood Springs, left Colorado to pursue his art career in NYC and Europe, but then returned to Colorado in 1938 and moved to Redstone to continue his career and start his family (Dorik was the 2nd of 4 children). During his brief 20-year career, Frank won federal Public Works mural commissions, three Guggenheim fellowships, taught at Columbia University, and traveled to the Caribbean and Panama during WWII to provide artistic documentation of the US Armed Forces participation in the war. He died of a heart attack in 1946 at age 42. 

Frank’s wife Paula held on to the family home in Redstone, and we got to stay there with Carolyn during our visit. We knew hints of this remarkable family story from previous conversations with Dorik and Carolyn, but being steeped in these stories while sleeping in that house was truly remarkable.  

Serendipitously, while we were in Redstone, one of Kayla’s dear friends from Holden Village times (in 1997!!) was camping in Glenwood Springs with her family for Memorial Day weekend! We met up with Sonja, Chazz, Claire, and Helen for a fantastic day of walking around town, throwing frisbees, and sitting by the fire at their campsite. The visit was all too short, but oh-so-excellent; a wonderful way to reconnect, and I’m sure we’ll find a way to spend more time with them.

On May 28, we went back to Palisade and squatted in Carolyn’s house while she went on to Boulder. We spent the afternoon regrouping and recharging, because the next day we were finally clear to get to Kenyon’s ranch! We left the Bettymobile in Palisade, just in case the ranch’s stream flow was still intense, but also because we had other sleeping options for the next day or two.

Kenyon is also a friend we met when he lived in Sitka and ran the Sitka Conservation Society. His life path since then led him to meet Mary Conover, owner of Mountain Island Ranch near Grand Junction, CO. Kenyon and Mary got married 10 years ago and have combined their love of the land, commitment to sustainable land management practices, and political savvy to join with other western ranchers and advocate for federal policies and support around land conservation and wildlife preservation. During our two days with them, we saw only a small portion of their 120,000 acres (combined private land with public grazing rights), and learned only a small bit about their work and philosophies, but it was incredibly fascinating and made us both want to spend more time there, learn more, and lend a hand. This might be a moment in our travels where we look back and wonder why we didn’t just stay longer … but, it was starting to get into the uncomfortable heat of summer, and we had tickets to an awesome music festival in a few days, so … we shared warm embraces and promises to return, and off we went. Back to Palisade to collect the Bettymobile and our refrigerateables, and then onward to Utah.

Trip Odometer: 10,186

This report comes to you from Escalante, UT. We’ve settled here for five days to do some exploring and catch up on our reporting!

May 15 -16: We left Cortez and Mesa Verde and landed in Monticello, UT, which is right at the gateway to Canyonlands National Park.

May 17-18: We originally thought this would be when we went to our friend’s place in Colorado, but he’s so wilderness-y that to get to him you have to cross a creek (!!), and with the recent snowmelt and rain the water was running too high. So, instead we spent two days in Moab. The town of Moab itself? Meh. Too touristy and pretty bougie. Overpriced pub food and SO MANY ATV rentals. But the lands around it?!!? Astonishing.

On May 19 we moved on to Colorado for 12 days full of friends, art, history, ranching, and more rocky canyons. We need to unpack all those experiences a bit more before posting about them, but we’ll get back to you soon! One last Arches vista before we sign off:

Trip Odometer 9962

First a little note on the odometer readings. These are current miles, not the mileage at the point that we are describing in the blog. As I type this I am sitting in the shade in Palisade, Colorado (spoilers!) but I’ll be writing in this blog about events that happened many miles and almost two weeks ago. Sometime today we’ll have traveled 10,000 miles – with many more to go.

All this to say that we need to catch up on our bloggins, so here we go!

Wednesday, May 10: We decide to leave early from Joshua Tree. (That means the Bettie Mobile is rolling at 11:30 am.) We are heading to Wilhoit AZ, just outside of Prescott, where it looks like we’ll have a funky little campsite at Burro RV Park that has a funky little bar at its center. We take Hwy 62 and head east through a vast amount of … well … nothing. (It’s amazing how many different kinds of nothing we’ve driven through — each one has been unique!) Until we get about 30 miles west of the AZ border, where the highway parallels the railroad tracks, and we pass a strange shoe memorial.

Turns out this is a known desert feature, with mentions in several roadtripping websites, and even a space on Yelp: Shoe Fence of Rice. There is also miles and miles of “rock graffiti” – names spelled out in rocks or other detritus parallel to the railroad tracks. Fascinating.

We travel on to Parker (hello again, Arizona!) and Bouse, then take 90 through Salome and Aguila. Somewhere along this route we begin to see saguaro cactus poking out of the sand. Next we take 71 to Congress, and we are lifted out of the desert valley and into the mountains. By Yarnell we’ve climbed to 4840 feet from our start of 2800 in the valley.

The Burro RV park is a bust. Bar is closed, no one is around to tell us where to go. We shrug and decide to just head straight in to Prescott and try our luck there. The road from Wilhoit to Prescott is crazy, twisty, turny, and up! We climb up to 6000 ft by the time we pull into downtown. We can’t find a campground with showers that doesn’t charge one arm and one leg, so we decide to give ourselves a break and stay the night at a Holiday Inn. We take hot showers, eat cheese and crackers, and give ourselves a blissful night’s sleep.

May 11: we wake up tired, and realize that those windy and sun-blaring days in the desert have taken a physical toll on us. We decide to give ourselves another day at the hotel, with MT running errands while KB worked. In the afternoon we tour Prescott College, where Kayla received her Masters degree through a self-designed, limited-residency program while living and working at Mt Edgecumbe High School in Sitka. Maybe it was because this was almost (*gasp*) twenty years ago, and/or maybe it’s because Kayla only spent something like 16 total days on campus, but NONE of it looked familiar. The most important Prescott connection was Kayla’s beloved advisor, Jeanne James — unfortunately, Jeanne’s dementia made a face-to-face visit unadvisable, but Kayla was able to share her admiration and appreciation for Jeanne with her husband, Dale.

That evening it was take-out Thai and TV, then another long sleep.

May 12: We set out for adventure with a general direction but no plan for where we will land. Hwy 89 to 169 to I17 to Flagstaff for provisions. Did some research over lunch, and decided to camp at the Navaho National Monument, which we reached via Hwy 89 to 160 through Tuba City, then 594.

What a cool spot! We saw wild horses on our way up to the park. The National Monument campground is free (!!), mostly full, (though we find our spot) and comically unlevel. Picnic tables are chained to the ground at impossible angles. Fire pits would require heroic chair balancing to sit around. We take our bikes to an overlook and watch the sun go down.

May 13: We stopped at the monument’s visitor’s center and took a nice hike around the rim of a canyon to view an old Hopi pueblo. Then we got back on the road.

Hwy 160 through Kayenta, Dennehotso, and Red Mesa, where we see a sign for their local radio station, 89.7. For a little while we enjoy “Rock Me Gently, Rock Me Slowly” before we ride out of range.

For our many past days in the desert (and those to come) we’ve enjoyed the benefits of a fairly “wet” spring. The have been some rains, and there are flowers everywhere. It seems as though each valley, ridge, and canyon has its own collection of flowers that add a little color to the landscape – though it is hard to take a picture that does justice. Along the drive we are both struck by a scene of white goats eating purple flowers against a red sand background.

We go through Teec Nos Pos and then arrive at Four Corners – where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah all meet. We think this would be an interesting place to have lunch until we are greeted with the $8 per person fee to enter a flat piece of desert surrounded by industrial hardware where the only attraction is that is sits on a geopolitical boundary. That’s a hard “nope”. We eat our sandwiches on the side of the road.

We cross into Colorado and land in Cortez, where we arrive at a campground that was originally a kids’ bible camp and is now more of a hippie collective that sits in the shadow of Mesa Verde National Park. As soon as we park the camper, it begins to thunderstorm and hail. Like, seriously. We spend the evening in the camper dining on cheese, hummus, ham, and crackers. And Jameson.

May 14: We spent the day exploring Mesa Verde National Park, looking at the remains of communities inhabited by the Ancestral Pueblo people and staring in awe at the incredible rock cliffs.

We’ll leave it there for now, but stay tuned for a quick post about Canyonlands and Arches – coming soon!

Trip Odometer: 9,833 (Today or tomorrow will be a banner day!)

We’ve been through some desert lands and incredible national parks since our last dispatch. This one is coming to you from Moab, Utah. But there’s a lot of ground to cover — let’s go back in time a few weeks.

Sunday, April 30: After saying goodbye to Oliver the pig and the alpacas in Monte Rio, we traveled straight to Vacaville, CA to spend some time with our dear friend Brian, who we first met many years ago when he was a visiting percussionist with the Juneau Symphony.

Twyla (the car) got a full check up. She’s doing great, though there is a small oil leak we will have to watch. Our time in Vacaville was spent taking some short day trips, working on the camper, and of course spending time with Brian!

Saturday, May 6: It was time to head on, so we loaded up and hit the highway. We stayed clear of (but often close to) the interstate through Rio Vista, Lodi, Stockton, and Tipton. This is agricultural land, for sure.

Just past Porterville we stayed the night at a campground on Lake Success, an Army Corps of Engineers project. It gave us a chance to test out the awning (still a work in progress) and enjoy a well-lit campground, thanks to our neighbor who brought enough wattage to light a professional baseball game.

The next day we took I65 to Bakersfield, listening to Buck Owens the whole way.

From there we hopped on East 58 and quickly gained 2000 ft, leaving the orchards for desert. In Barstow we picked up 247 to Lucerne, then a hard left to Joshua Tree Lake RV park for three nights.

The first night we just enjoyed the RV park. It’s a funky little family-owned campground – they’re not just providing campsites and restrooms, they also produce mini-festivals (we *just* missed a small folk festival and songwriting workshop!) and have been thoughtful about tree plantings and art placement. Plus a pond with lots of ducks!

Day two: Kayla did office work and Matthew worked on the camper. Then in the afternoon we drove the length of Joshua Tree National Park, with a few short excursions. What a weird and wild landscape!

Pro tips for visiting Joshua Tree: If you’re driving through in late afternoon, drive west to east (from Joshua Tree to 29 Palms) so the setting sun is behind you and shining on the rock formations as you drive toward them (and the sun’s not in your eyes!). If you’re driving through in the morning, well … go the other direction! Also, if you like the band U2, we highly recommend cueing up their Joshua Tree album – it really did reflect the vast majesty of this incredible park full of Seussian trees and big rock piles.

Our third day in Joshua Tree – there was a prediction of high winds in the afternoon, so we hit the park “early” for some nice hikes. (I think we entered the park at 9:30 am, so we’re still not exactly early birds!) The winds came as predicted, and whoo boy was it brutal. We kept shelter in our tent, and managed to make dinner.

The Desert Plant and Flower Series

After Joshua Tree … well … we’ve covered some incredible ground over the last 10 days! Stay tuned for an upcoming post about our visit to Navajo National Monument, plus Mesa Verde, Canyonlands, and Arches National Parks! (Spoiler: they’re all amazing!!) Right now, we’re about to head out of Moab and make our way to some friends around the Grand Junction, CO area. Thanks for following along – sending you big hugs!!

Trip Odometer: 7790

Greetings from Vacaville, CA! We’ve been settled in here in Cowtown, Sonoma County, since April 30. We are staying with our friend Brian Simpson, getting ready for a big push into the desert. Twyla (the car) got her check up, so she’s eager to get some miles under those freshly rotated tires. Matthew is hoping to install the awnings on the Betty Mobile, if it can just get up to 60 degrees and stay there for a while. We are likely pointing southeastward this Friday, May 5, heading toward northern Arizona, southern Utah, and western Colorado.

Wednesday, April 19 – Seattle: We packed up the car, got the Betty Mobile in Renton, and loaded up for a big day of driving. First stop was Portland to pick up the awnings we had made at Hayden Island Canvas. They get a big thumbs up from me for being willing to work with my ideas. I must have called eight or more other boat canvas outfits that didn’t want to hear another word from me once I said “camper.” We had lunch nearby at

home of the Glen Frye chicken sandwich (excellent). It is a pretty amazing place, so if you ever find yourself in the area…

North of Corvalis the I5 traffic got stupid, so we started blazing a trail that took us through Tangent, Stedd, Halsey, Harrisburg, Junction City, Noti, Walton, Mapleton, and finally to the coast at Florence. From there we caught beautiful Hwy 101 to Winchester Bay and the Oregon Dunes Recreation Area. This place is clearly set up for high volume tourism, but in the chilly shoulder season it was mostly empty.

April 20: Another day of driving for distance. It was a rainy day. We drove 101 to Coos Bay and had coffee at “So It Goes” cafe. Further on in Bandon we drove around the cute town and had oatmeal and biscuits at the Rolling Pin. Kayla needed to do a zoom meeting, but the library was closed. She tried and failed to do it using her cell phone. That’s the first oops she has had with connectivity and her job (but she still managed to connect with audio-only).

We finally left the rain behind as we got to the Sue-Meg Campground in Trinidad, CA. We had at one point reserved a space here for four nights, but gave that up when we decided to stay longer in Seattle. Still, one night there was special.

April 21-22: It was time to hustle to Monte Rio and our next housesitting gig. We continued on Hwy 101, but south of Eureka it meanders away from the coast and starts moving inland. About one hour out of Trinidad we leave the redwood forests and by the time we got to Hopland, we are clearly in wine country.

That evening we arrive at Karen and Bev’s house. We will have 31 animals to care for, and we get a good course in their care and routine that evening and the next day. Our hosts and their menagerie of animals are all lovely.

April 23-29: We quickly settle into the routine at Monte Rio and love it. The weather is mostly sunny, though sometimes with big wind. One day we head to the beach and it nearly blows us away. We stayed out for maybe 30 minutes, and the windchill just about froze our brains. Yet, when get back to the house, it feels sunny and calm. The house is nestled on the leeward side of the hill among the redwoods, blocking that pesky wind. Over the course of the week, we find that our favorite place to be is at the house among the critters.

Still, we did venture out a few more times. We had a nice day trip to Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Preserve. They just come right out and say it on a sign, “Yeah, our redwoods aren’t as big as the ones up in Humboldt County, but what are you gonna do?” We also headed out one evening to nearby Guerneville to grab a bite and catch a local antiquarian band playing jazz standards and a few surprises. We grab some homemade ice cream at the shop nearby that used to be a bank. You can even hang out and eat your cone in the vault.

And here’s a bonus video of Oliver. He likes to sleep under a bunch of blankets on the porch.